Heavy Sea at Pourville

As opposed to the techniques used in the majority of his other landscapes, Monet employed a rhythmic blending of rough brush strokes and a very light layering of pigment in this work created in a small fisherman's hut by the beach. The brushwork is very slight on the light sparkles of the calm surface of the sea and thickens and becomes more agitated as the artist depicts an instant impression of peaking waves and scudding clouds. While quite distant from the brushwork roots of the original Impressionism, the free brushwork found in Monet's final works is prefigured here.